All right, ba fam, I am so excited.
B a q A.
I stole Chris and y'a Nelly and they're sticking around to take y'all's questions. Welcome to the brand ambition. QA yan Nelly. You haven't done a QA with us, have you?
No? I have? Oh, I do one with Tiff. I think on the episode where me and Tiff were when you were just had just popped.
Oh he just pop, Oh my baby. Okay. I was like, yep, what like when I get out of bed whole and everything pops like that?
No, it snap, crackle pop like you popped out a baby.
Oh man. Well, b a qa, y'all have questions, We have answers with the lowercase A. I like to say, get your salt shakers out, because you're not gonna sue us. This is infotainment. It is information from people who are pretty smart and know some stuff, but for entertainment purposes. Okay, we're not your financial advisor or your financial planner, so you know, sue someone else, just not us. Don't come for us, all right, and please submit your questions. You
can hit us up on IG. You can send us a d M. A voice message is fine on ig or just a regular old text message. You can also email us Brand Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. All right, we got some good questions today. So the first question is from someone who's anonymous and wants to know. I have been following your podcast for over a year and we have a question for you. Can you recommend a good auto refinance company for me? I hate Capital One,
It's not an option, thank you auto refinance. So this is like, you have an auto loan and you're not happy with the rate or like the monthly payments and you want to REFI have you guys done that before?
I have refinanced, Like I'm not refinanced a car loan, but I have just like done like a credit card consolidation before. And yeah, I mean I feel like it's hard to say there's one really good company because which you should really be doing is shopping around so that you can get the best rate. Especially right now, rates are starting to change.
You the rates are starting to drop.
So you know, somebody might have just dropped their rate a little lower than somebody else, and it's kind of on you to do that due diligence to find the best option out there for you. Rather than just saying, oh, you know, well I heard Capital one is good or not good kind of you know, shop around and compare lenders until you find one that's going to give you the best deal.
Yeah.
I've heard of a company. I heard about them a little while back called Auto Approof. They're supposed to be a company that will help you go out and find a good refinance deal for your auto loan and help you.
With the process like a marketplace.
Yeah, and they're kind of like walking through the process and get you through there. I haven't haven't checked them out in a little while, so I don't know what's going on right now with them, But that's one but kind of again I was saying, also checking out your local areas. Your credit unions are a great place. But then you know, if you I'll be curious where they're at in their auto loan, Like, are they like a
couple of years in did they just start? Because I mean the way they set up these auto loans, you're paying kind of like a mortgage. You're paying most of the interests up front in the beginning, and it kind of tapers off as you go. So if you're like getting that midway point you probably already paid a ton of interest at this point, and sometimes refinancing kind of just resets that clock and might call you can get
a lower rate. You might end up paying more interest over the life of the loan, so you might want to just take time kind of think about it, play with a couple of little auto loan calculators, kind of just see where you're at.
Yeah, shout out to my former employer, lending Tree, because I ran the content team there for like five years. And lending Tree is a marketplace too, so if you want to shop and compare, that's their whole platform is you can compare rates among different lenders. Now, they will be calling your ass when you submit for that free quote, so use the number that you don't answer all the time. I don't know, but.
Set up a Google voice number.
That's kind of Yes, that's exactly. But using one of the sites as great, and you know they take some of the legwork out for you. But yeah, that's a really good point, Chris, like pros and cons of auto refi is you know, it's a good point. It's also one of those things where sometimes if your payment is
just too high and you're like the cash flow. You're having cash flow issues, you will make a bad decision for the good of your finances sometimes, and I mean the the bad decision being you know, let me refinance, even though it's going to be more expensive over time, but it's going to give me relief maybe in the form of like a lower payment today. That may be okay.
So as you know that, as long as you know that, because the worst scenario is that you make the decision under the guys or like thinking that you are saving yourself money or making a financial responsible choice, and then when you run the math later, you go, damn, I really got screwed because now I'm paying more in the long run. But if you are aware that you're doing that, and you're kind of in a situation where you're like, well, this one time, I kind of have to do it.
It's going to be two or three years like this, and then I'm going to get back on track. Fine, But I do think a lot of people end up making these choices without the full clear picture.
That's kind of the heartbreaking part.
But Mandy, you're asolutely right, there's gonna be times sometimes you just gotta you gotta do what you have to do. For the short term and not necessarily focused just on the long term all the time.
Yeah, car payments are so expensive.
Now, girl, the average car payment is a thousand dollars here thousand dollars a month. Late twenty twenty four, the average car payment was one thousand dollars a month. How the hell all the people these cars?
That's what I'm trying to figure out. I wish I would have give someone a thousand dollars a month for a car.
Car, Chris, is it paid off? What you got?
Pay off? My car is eleven years old. I paid the thing four years ago.
For five A long time car about to hit puberty. You have a car I've never driven.
I don't have a driver's license, honey, will you Brooklyn? I got a bunch of Metro cards in my wallet still, even though I live in Miami.
So that's how New York I am.
But no, I've never owned a car.
How do you guys get around?
He's a Jersey boy. He definitely has a license to.
Okay team, so we're a good partner. Privilege.
I'm a passenger princess. I'm a professional passenger princess.
When I am I couldn't even get behind the will if you.
Wanted to, for real, not safely.
No, No, I feel bad for him if he ever needs you to take him somewhere.
I know we are.
I could do. I could do the basics, but like, if I'm on the highway, I might. You could do the basics that drive on the like I could drive on the street, like I could drive on the street with pedestria and driving and souff. But if I'm on the highway, the freeway, like, my heart is gonna come out of my chest because I'm so scared.
Because cars is the easiest thing for me.
No, it's too fast, it's too meet a car.
That drives for you, you know.
Oh yeah, that's what I'm gonna just wait until the cars are all self driving and be like, oh look, I don't even need to get the license thing because I.
Don't understand that I'm born and raised inside of California.
Car payment and I told y'all, I opened up about having two cars now, and I just like, man, that's my goal is to get that ish paid off. First credit card debt.
Ugh, it's a lot. And that's one thing I will say. I've talked to my little brother and my niece about this, and I told them, I said, honestly, the one thing that I did early like that helped me was I never had a car, like I took the subway. When I worked in New York City, I took the subway to work every day, I packed my lunch. I was
like super savior. And then when I moved to Miami, I kind of like live in a building that's in an area where like everything is right here, Like my supermarket is right downstairs, the dentist is up the block, like there's everything. The airport is fifteen minutes away. So my Uber and Lyft rides every month are probably like two hundred and fifty dollars, no more like in a month where I spent a lot, it'd be like three hundred. But I don't pay insurance, I don't have a car payment.
I don't pay for gas, I don't pay parking, I don't pay tolls, I don't pay so it kind of is like just two fifty on spending. When I need to travel and take an Uber here there, it's fine for me.
But yeah, I mean I read at Metro North Pass costs out here and wessitors, so yeah, Transit costs.
And even with the paidoff car, I'm paying that much in gas and insurance and registration every month. So it's like you're not you in the same position just by not having a.
Car, right. Auto debt is just not cute? All right, Anonymous, Well, thank you for your question. That was from IG. We're gonna take a little break and come right back with our second question. All right, VA, family are back. I'm joined by Janellies Finale and Chris Browning. Welcome to the BA Roundtable QA for the week. So I have something that I love, which is when a listener who we answered their question before kind of like follows up with
us to let them know what's happening now. So just a quick follow up from listener Kathy who says she reached out to us. I'm trying to remember she reached out to us last year and the episode is called no Job, It's Worth a health decline. At the time, she had a job at one of the top universities in the country. She was saying she commuted up to three hours to get to work, so that means five hours five to six hours total round trip. Yeah, three
days a week. She works from home two days a week and then she's asked her current job for a moving bonus or for more support and staffing, but they've declined. At the time and she was asking us, she said she might have a full time job lined up that's ten minutes from where she lives, but she'd be taking a twenty five percent pay cut in a lower title.
So if she wanted to know, what did we think, Well, we had encouraged her to choose what's best for her life and for her health and that long ass commute, like the mind like the exhaustion of that. I mean, I think at the time we had been pretty much like girl, like for your health and your sanity. Twenty five percent is you know, plus the like we just mentioned about cars, the gas, travel costs, traffic, yes, maintenance,
all that. So Kathy wanted to follow up. She said, I put in the work to find a position that has allowed me to have a better work life balance. I recently accepted a position thirty minutes away from my home. I'm getting the same pay as my previous job, more work from home pays, and more professional development. Shout out to Mandy for the negotiation tips. Thank you again. Keep being great girl.
Kathy.
I'm so happy for Kathy because that is huge shaving like thirty minutes there and back. That's an hour a day. That's so much better than five to six hours.
I can't even imagine what type of commune.
My goodness, I mean our Journey to Launch.
Yeah, I was about to say it works for people who have like a goal that they need that time day, they can use that time for Like Jamila used to listen to podcasts a lot, and then because she was so in tune with podcasting, because as being a listener, she was able to create such a high quality podcast that like, yeah, everybody knows Journey to Launch. It's like
super it's such a great, well known podcast. Why because she had listened for hours and hours and hours during her commutes and kind of knew how to make a good podcast that she would want to listen to as a you know, loyal podcast listener. So I do think if you can use that time, you know, as in transitioning to something, that it will benefit you somehow. It
can work out. But in the long run, yeah, man, nothing is gonna just drive you to the ground, drive your health down, so your mental health and just robs you so much time, Like when you're home is late and you're just like, how did the whole day escape me? Because all I did today was just go to work, and you don't have time for yourself. So I do think at some point having a transition plan is so important.
But man, congrats to Kathy, because thirty minutes from six hours ooh from five hours is huge.
I'm so happy for you, Kathy, and thank you for following up. Y'all, if we've answered your questions and you want to follow up, please do, please do, okay. Our final question for today is from listener Shakira, who sent us Shaki Tha. Shaki sent us a DM on IG. She's got some credit card debt, she says, about seven thousand dollars a credit card debt. She says, my credit
is excellent and I make decent money. I feel like I'm going a little bit backwards because I do have some investments in stocks are worth about the same amount I have in debt. This is not my four to one K, but my side personal investments. So she's got about seven k in credit card debt and seven K and then her personal investments. So Shakira wants to know what it makes sense to cash out the stocks that I have to pay off my debt and then just
start investing again after the debt is paid off. Thanks in advance. Oh, this is a good question. I'm very curious to hear what you guys have to say.
I'm gonna let Chris take it first.
I have thoughts.
You go first. Okay, when do you not have thoughts? No?
I got a lot of sight, but Chris first.
All right, I'll be quick. I'm gonna give you more of the time here for me. I mean, that's a good, good question because you think about it, like, I don't know what the interest rates are your credit card, but I'm assuming they're not great.
Twenty something, right, probably even with great credit twenty something, Yeah.
It's still crossing twenty. Now, the likelihood of you getting that same type of return on your investments, I mean, it might happen, but it's not guaranteed. The average will be much slower than that. I mean, so just mathematically, I could see the relief going from doing that. But also, is it something that you realistically could tackle in a few months? You feel like if you had three, four or five months, you could just pay this off through
your regular payments. If I if that's the case, I wouldn't rush to cash out that investment because you may not be able to put that back. Maybe you'd not gona be asciplined to put that money right back in again, So you're costing yourself. You may just like eliminate that investment option that you're doing all together. And there could be some tax implications too. I don't know what type
of account this is. If it's in the brokerage account, he may have had some gains he might have to you might end up owing taxes, which is going to eat into whatever you would have pulled at anyway. So I would say, if you feel confident that you could tackle this on your own, and you know three to five
months through regular payments, I would go that route. But if you're like, no, it would take me a couple of years to pay this off monthly, I would consider it because you'd be paying so much more an interest than you probably would be making by just letting us sit there.
How I love that answer, Chris. I was about to say the tax part for sure, Like I just that is the number one piece of investing that most people do not consider because of the way that it's structured and set up right. If you were to sell your investments today January whatever date it is, let's say January twenty twenty five, you sell your investments, you don't see
any taxes, you don't see any tax hit. You take out whatever you take out, and that number is what you get to send to the credit card companies, and you think the problem is solved and you're done. But come tax ses in twenty twenty six. You're going to owe those capital gains taxes, whether they're short term capital gains taxes, which means it's the same income tax brackets for the twenty twenty five year for your income or long term capital gains which could be zero percent, fifteen
or twenty percent. So you have to figure out where it's going to be based on your income again, and which means at the end of the day, you still have to do the math and kind of decide for yourself, like, is it better for me to delay this and do just the tax bill that I'm going to owe in the spring of twenty twenty six by selling my investments
now and getting rid of the credit card. That gives me a few months to come up with that money that I'm going to owe when I file my taxes, or would I rather not deal with that and just pay the interest for a couple months until I pay off that seven k. It's all a numbers game, right, So if the numbers don't make sense to kind of do it monthly and the seven k is a lot
for you. To Chris's point, it might make sense. But in a lot of cases, like people just discount, they just do not consider those taxes, and it comes around and it shocks people and it surprises people, and it's like, wait, hold up, what because by the time it comes around, you done forgot about it because you sold those stocks so long ago.
So I really do think cost basis right, what.
Is cost basis and what's long term capital gains versus short term capital games. I didn't even know there's a difference in those brackets. So I do think if you run the math and it makes sense long versus short term,
make the choice that makes sense mathematically. But to Chris's point, there's a little bit of a psychology piece to this too, that if you are if your life is going to feel exponentially better and you have a weight completely lifted off of you knowing that the credit card that is not there and that you're not paying twenty nine point nine percent interests, then you might want to do it.
And just now you have time to start preparing a separate how you'd savings account where you put a little bit of money every month so that when taxes comes around, you have the taxes that you will owe because you're buying yourself time right with that money. So I do think that's kind of the factors that matter the most in the decision making process.
I love both of those perspectives. The other thing I will add, speaking from experience, is the cash flow problem typically is why people end up in debt. So you don't have enough coming in, so you're putting things on credit cards that you don't have the cash upfront to
pay for. And sometimes that's fine, Like I mean, sometimes you just you haven't been paid that month yet you want to get something you have money coming in, but it can start to creep up on you, right, So I would just caution you, Shakiras, to really get dedicated to a budget so that when you pay off this credit card debt, whether you're doing it with you know, selling your stocks to pay it down or paying it off over time, try to get to the heart of
how did that seven thousand dollars accrue? It's not the most I've ever heard of in credit card debt. Certainly I have way more than that myself, but I do worry about, you know, if you can pay it off with the stocks right now, but then it kind of like starts to creep back up because some of like the core underlying issue, which is probably the budget, hasn't been resolved and that can be hard to confront. That's why let me let me speak some good on one
of my partners, Rocket Money. Have you guys used Rocket Money. Yeah, I'm a new personal finance app. I really love it. Ei there's a free version and a little bit more paid premium version for like six bucks. But I've been loving it personally, I mean genuinely, genuinely enjoying it because it has helped me so much visualize my spending in my cash flow, and it's been like a really good route awakening to have this app.
So I just usecourageons that could sometimes be eating away at your cash flows.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't realize what a generous what a generous uh, donator, I am donor, donor, I am yep. I've been donating fifty dollars a month since twenty twenty to a food bank here, which is amazing, but like, also, that's six hundred dollars a month that I could use. Twenty five dollars a month is aclu, I'm donating like twenty five a month of planned parenthood. I had to send some emails.
Yeah, that was me, would save the Children. I did that with Save the Children, and I had two three years and I was like, wait a minute here, I think I gave enough. I think I'm at a point where I need to start thinking them home. Yeah, very cool, though, No, but you gotta be real.
Two hundred meals to Westchester. I'm like, great, I feel good about that now.
And if you're in a position, if you're in a position, that's fine. Like I'm I'm in a position now where I can give Save the Children one hundred bucks a month and it's not going to make or break my finances. But back when I was trying to pay off my credit card dad, that was not the case. So it really is about your situation and where you're at. So just be real with yourself, but Mandy one hundred percent agreed the budgeting is usually the root of it.
M M.
Well, good luck Shakira and thank you for your question. Now BA fan police, submit your questions. We are here. You can stay anonymous, but you know, give us a pseudonym, and you always want to be called something, you know, use a little, a little non de plume. You can email us at Brownda Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com or hit us up on ig We're at Brown Ambition
Podcast on the Gram. Thank you to my beautiful Brown co host jan Nelly and Chris for joining me for the v a QA and we'll see you guys next time. By